Kristallnacht Lecture: Mannheim High School

On Monday, April 28, I was invited (by Summer's teacher) to be a guest speaker in two honor history classes. Summer had told her about my project. I was happy to oblige. If you know me, you know that I rarely turn down an opportunity to have people listen to what I say and look at what I make. Needless to say, I accepted.

The classes, one with about 10 students and the other with about 18, just started reading Elie Wiesel’s, “Night”.  This is a powerful and disturbing account of the Wiesel family’s torture and suffering in the concentration camps of Germany and Poland. Although my project is directly related to the Holocaust, it’s (Kristallnacht) more obscure and less known.

I started by asking definition of words like “anti-Semitism” and “pogrom”. I talked about what I believe caused the world to turn against the Jews and to allow the near annihilation of them. For me, it was important to stress that living in Germany and understanding this history changed how I viewed the world. How living here made an abstract idea, a real life “concrete” event for me.

I quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." I talked about "indifference" and silence - or turning your head when bad things are happening to other people. I referenced this poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller too.

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When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
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I showed a 6 minute presentation I put together of my work so far and then took questions. It was very rewarding and I look forward to doing it again.